


saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch

by tortoiseshells



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: (A Song-Fic With Rims If You Will), (This May Be Just a Somewhat Sophisticated Song-fic), Emma Green Has Fun and Also a Minor Crisis of Conscience, F/M, Gen, Henry Has Some Real Talk With Himself, I STG Everyone in This Hospital Needs Adult Supervision, Mercy Street Players -Verse, NB: Henry Does Not Read Shakespeare In This Fic. Alas., Rehearsing Meaningful Passages of Romeo & Juliet, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 16:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18814261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells
Summary: The problem with being a man of God, thought Henry Hopkins, is that one is still stubbornly a man. // Emma Green stood in for Juliet, and wondered about the power of transformation.





	saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch

**i.**

Private Welles was ill, again – or at least, that was red-haired Private Aherne’s gambit, holding out the well-used book to Miss Green, and looking both piteous and harmless with his empty right trouser-leg and crutch out of reach. Would she help him learn his lines, and read Juliet? 

“It’s not long before Gielgud wants to perform – he’s a slave-driver, Nurse,” he continued.

Henry saw Miss Green wince. Aherne did, as well, for he quickly pivoted, and pled further. “I mean, Nurse Green – he’s a Corporal – a big man – used to being obeyed.” He lowered his voice, tightened his vowels and dropped his ‘r’s – sounding like the New York Corporal, but Gielgud as a baritone on some operatic stage: _“Polish your buttons, Private! Shoulder arms, Private! We’ll quick-march from Boston to Savannah if I say so, Private!_ ”

Aherne looked down when he finished, rubbing the back of his neck, and waited for Miss Green – who recovered, and laughed more brightly than brittlely. “And you’ve marched to Savannah, Private Aherne?”

“No, Miss. Johnston’s too good for us to get further ‘n Williamsburg.”

“I’m sure Corporal Gielgud will forgive you for that, at least.” 

“If not for not knowing my lines,” he persisted.

Not a little enviously, Henry thought that Aherne was one of those souls who could charm the Devil or sell Saint Peter the proverbial Pearly Gates. 

“I only have a little time, Private,” Miss Green responded, indulgently, taking the book from his hands, “Where am I reading?”

“Act One, Scene Five. The Capulet’s shindy? The big party.”

“Won’t you need Cibber and Kemble?”

“They know their lines. I don’t – or my cues, either, Nurse Green – I’d be obliged if you’d read their parts, and Welles’s too. Gielgud says you do the voices as well as the Miss Cushmans.”

One eye raised skeptically, Miss Green stood at the foot of Aherne’s bed, and flipped ahead to the chapter. 

Down the ward, Henry looked guiltily back down at his letter-writing – telling himself it was all right, that Novak had fallen asleep, that transcribing would keep for a moment or two, and if there was any harm – well, it wasn’t to Novak. This distraction of his had become frequent. Without thinking he was always listening for Emma Green’s Virginia drawl, and always waiting for it to be directed at him. 

Miss Green began to pronounce Lord Capulet’s welcome, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye. Aherne nodded, red curls bobbing, as she went along – and poorly stifled a guffaw as she argued with herself:

“How long is’t now since last yourself and I were in a mask? - _By’r Lady, thirty years._ \- What, man! ‘tis not so much, ‘tis not so much …”

There was something of Major Summers in demure Miss Green’s Lord Capulet, he thought idly, as she continued her bickering, only for Aherne to interrupt after a moment’s expectant hesitation “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” 

Juliet had entered, then. 

He’d paid little attention to this scene before, in part because Private Welles had been, well – uninspiring, and in part because it had no immediate meaning to him. It was still too much, too grand – rich like Christmas pudding, to say she hung as a star, a jewel in the night – and now, with her worn calicoes and stained aprons, he couldn’t imagine Miss Green would welcome being hailed as _beauty too rich for use_. Not in earnest, at least – Doctor Foster could grin and call for “Nurse Hoopskirt” or “Nurse Peaseblossom” on any day, asking after her silks like one asks after elderly relatives. But she and Foster had an upbringing in common, and Miss Green knew that Doctor Foster had no interest in her.

She’d indicated as much, within a few weeks of her arrival. Henry didn’t remember what he’d said – whatever it was, it must have been clumsy, some observation about Foster’s marriage – but she’d only laughed it off. “He doesn’t mean anything by it – he does it to pass the time. You must treat courtship very differently in the North!”

Perhaps they did, or he did – courtship, he supposed. It wouldn’t have worried at him so much if he hadn’t tripped over himself to ask her to dance some days later, Miss Green’s dismissal of flirtation as suitable an excuse as anything else could be. It didn’t have to mean anything but the passing of time.

Down the ward, Miss Green had paused. “This is Tybalt and Capulet for two pages. Shall we skip, villain Romeo?”

“I don’t know that party very well, and Gielgud wants me on stage throughout. I should know what I’m reacting to, shouldn’t I?”

“I believe you’re trying to buy time to remember your lines,” she replied, indulgently, and continued Lord Capulet and Tybalt’s argument – should the scion of the Montagues be allowed to remain? Miss Green’s Lord Capulet was absent, tired: it was easy to imagine how, from his benign disinterest, disaster could strike.

 _Disinterest_. The word caught at his conscience like brambles. Henry wasn’t disinterested, and that was the problem. He might have convinced Miss Green temporarily, and repeated the lie to himself enough that it sometimes drowned out the truth, but he hadn’t asked her to dance indifferently, purposelessly. It was because she was lovely and resolute – and he wanted that for himself, her warmth, wanted her to smile up at him. Only he’d gone about it the wrong way, asking for one thing and meaning another, and he’d been rewarded as a coward deserved. There had been no dance. Miss Green had looked up at him after, and certainly had not been smiling.

“Private?” Miss Green prompted. Henry nearly jumped.

Aherne muttered an oath. “Will you say Tybalt’s line again?”

“I shouldn’t think it matters. You’ll know – it will just be you and Private Welles on the stage.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, Nurse,” he said, and sighed. “If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the fine is this:”

“Gentle fine.”

“The gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that …” Aherne trailed off. Henry, certain that between the turn his thoughts had previously taken, and listening to Miss Green – even if only Miss-Green-as-Juliet – be courted, he must be blushing like a boy. He ought to leave. He’d finished his business in this ward, and there were others, always, needing whatever help they could be given. 

“To smooth rough touch with a gentle kiss,” Miss Green corrected, and playfully rebuked him: “Oh, Private Aherne. Haven’t you got a girl at home? Is this how you’ve been wooing her?”

This was not a way to pass time, this was not disinterest, only more of the same dishonesty he’d committed before. Henry stood up, and left.

**ii.**

Movement from down the ward caught Emma’s eye. Chaplain Hopkins was leaving, the boy he’d been sitting with drowsing imperturbably. Emma had gotten used to thinking of him as a quiet, unobtrusive presence, but he hadn’t been – not of late, not since the ball and all that followed. Something about him had become unsettling.

Whatever Frank said, it wasn’t Chaplain Hopkins’ increasingly transparent interest in her, though the Lord knew there wasn’t a dissembling bone in that man’s body. Emma Green was used to thinking about herself as well-bred, well-dressed, and well-dowried – attractive, all in all, to any unmarried man – such as the Chaplain. But if that was true, it was also true that she was dressed in old castaways, snappish as a beaten dog, and nearly overwhelmed every time he’d seen her. Surely he’d been able to put two and two together: the Green name attached to the former hotel, a stately home, a once-thriving business – and the newcomer, Miss Green, who’d clearly never done a day’s work in her life. But, when she’d turned down the last lamp and been left alone with her thoughts, she didn’t think that was it – either that the solemn Yankee chaplain was thinking of her family’s money, or that her uneasiness was only because of his partiality.

Aherne’s retort interrupted her thoughts. “I haven’t been courting my Jenny in front of fifty men, Nurse. And it’s your line.”

She stuttered once or twice, not feeling guilty, exactly, but had the same unsettled feeling as before. “Good pilgrim,” she started finally, reminding herself that she had chosen this task, and that there were men in the hospital who – if not depending on her – wanted aid and attention from her, “you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss.”

“Have saints not lips, and holy pilgrims too?”

Juliet’s rebuke came easily, telling her ill-chosen new suitor to pray rather than importune her – not that it had any effect, as Aherne read his lines. He’d a better memory of these than the previous. Perhaps it was because Gielgud had drilled him relentlessly, or perhaps because of the same thing that made him grin like a rogue. He had a sweetheart back home, she recalled, one whose letters came folded in with his mother’s and sisters’ – one whose worried words she’d heard Aherne read aloud when the men shared news of home, the love of one man’s family standing in for the others, whose own loved ones had sent nothing in that day’s post.

Something about that thought caught at her attention, again. She read the words on the page – “Saints do not move” – as spiritedly as possible, though she worried at that unsettled-ness, feeling as though she was tugging at threads in a fraying seam. Emma wanted counsel, but who could she turn to? Mama or Papa, who would take this hesitation as a reason to keep her away from the hospital? Alice, who Emma would have to lie to for the rest of their lives? Belinda, who did not deserve to be dragged into such a mess? There was no one at home for her, and she stifled a sigh. She’d have to look for advice abroad, which almost certainly, of late, meant Nurse Mary. None of this would stagger her. Nothing seemed to surprise the older widow, and there was nothing short of what she saw as intentional evil that could not be accepted, if not forgiven. There was that assurance that Emma envied, a clarity of purpose – 

“Miss Green?”

“Hmm?”

Aherne coughed, far more delicately than she would have suspected him capable of. “It’s your line again.”

“I – I’m sorry, Private.” She fumbled for an excuse, lying to the poor boy seeming better than admitting – what? That there was something about Chaplain’s curious glances, Mary’s unexpected encouragement, the reshuffling of relationships and roles in her father’s hotel? “I thought I – I’d forgotten something.”

“No matter, we're almost done,” he said, looking a little less concerned. “Want me to repeat?”

“Please.”

“Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.”

“You kiss b’ the book,” Emma finished, not smiling, but not unhappy, perhaps, “And enter Nurse, who’s come to fetch poor Juliet. Well done, Private.”

He looked pleased with the compliment. “I suppose you’ve got to be Nurse yourself, as well?”

“I do. But this was far more pleasant than changing dressings.”

“What an endorsement to write home! Dear Mother, have been chosen to play Romeo, reliably informed my line-reading is preferable to collecting bandages. All my love, etc.”

Emma waved off his self-deprecation, feeling that she’d returned to steadier ground. “By the time you’ve recovered yourself, Private, you’ll be terribly accomplished at paying court. Miss MacRae will be a lucky woman.”

“No luckier than me, Nurse Green,” he replied, reaching for his crutch, “Lord knows I’ve brought her nothing but trouble so far.”

Emma wondered, briefly, if she should help him, remembering what Nurse Mary had once told her about the grievously ill and injured men in the hospital. Their lives would never be the same, but they wanted to feel as though there was a future for them – that, difficult as it was, their lives would still be worth living. Emma’s help should never make them feel helpless themselves. She smiled gently instead, holding the book before her as Aherne stood and balanced himself. “Well, you’re certainly not bringing any trouble to Corporal Gielgud. You’ve the end of this passage perfectly.”

“The proof’ll be in the pudding – and ‘till then, I’m off to check on Welles. That scoundrel isn’t getting out of this so easy.” He made a half-serious salute before walking off, whistling ‘John Brown’s Body’. 

There was that feeling again. Emma folded the book against her chest, like armor, and followed.

**Author's Note:**

> From "her eye discourses"-verse, sometime before the actual performance. Title, in keeping with the theme, is also from _Romeo and Juliet_ , from Act 1, Scene 5.
> 
> This has been in the drafts-folder for almost six months, so, in the spirit of end-of-term housecleaning, have some rather pointless and definitely plotless Henry and Emma wondering, separately, about their places in Mansion House vis-a-vis each other.


End file.
